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[October 30, 2022]


Today I spent a majority of the time at the hangar getting the remaining inspection covers installed onto the RV. I didn't put all of them on in case I ran into a wiring issue and needed to remove things.

I was using the stock autopilot settings the other day. Garmin has a way to fine tune all of the settings, but I didn't have time (or desire) to do that today. So I went to the fine Mothership of VAF and found the following:

ROLL SERVO: Gain 0.8 Max Torque 25% Fine adjust amount 0.0 PITCH SERVO: Max torque 50% Gain 2.5 Fine adjust amount 1.0 Fine adjust time 0.2 PITCH GAIN: Min AS 70Kts Max AS 180Kts Vert speed gain 1.4 Vert accel gain 1.0 Airspeed gain 1.35 Airspeed accel gain 1.0 We agree with Pat that you should find that 25% roll servo torque and 50% pitch servo torque should work well.





I found out yesterday that the Garmin GFC500 ecosystem wants nothing to do with the ARINC output of the Grand Rapid EFIS, and that is finally making sense to me since there is no GPS Steering mode on the GMC 507 or G5. However, it does look like the Altimeter setting comes through! When I update the barometric pressure setting on the GRT, it simultaneously updates the G5. That's a nice button saver!


Interior is installed and I even covered up the 2 1/4" hole in the panel!


The Grand Rapids EFIS asks a lot of questions when setting altitude when it thinks it has autopilot duties to drive. So I turned them off.


I headed up near Lancaster airport to pick up the closest VOR to me (LRP) and test out the nav functionality of the GMC507/G5. Worked as advertised! It was really hunting to stay on the VOR radial, but it did an OK job.


My exciting flight today - added a random hold 10 miles from the UNYTS IF/IAF and then flew the RNAV to 16. Autopilot worked like a dream! Happy to have this mostly done!

MOSTLY? Yeah, I need to add in the pitch control to the autopilot pitch servo. The GSA28 has the ability to control the pitch and roll trim. I don't think the roll trim is really that needed, but certainly the pitch trim is. So I need to splice in some wires which essentially already run right by the pitch servo.

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Last Modified: August 13, 2023